U.S. hopes for North Korea talks in days or weeks, Mike Pompeo says

WASHINGTON – The United States hopes to get back to denuclearization talks with North Korea in the coming days or weeks, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday.

Negotiations aimed at dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs have stalled since the collapse of a second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi in February.

Trump and Kim met again in June at the border between North Korea and South Korea and agreed to reopen working-level talks, but that has not happened.

“We know Chairman Kim has continued to make the commitment to denuclearize. We are hopeful that in the coming days or perhaps weeks we’ll be back at the negotiating table with them. That’s the best outcome,” Pompeo said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week.”

North Korea has fired a series of short-range missiles in recent weeks in protest against U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises and the adoption of new weapons, complicating the reopening of the talks.

Pompeo said that despite those short-range tests, which he called disappointing, Kim has not violated the commitments he made to Trump and the U.S. goal remains a verified denuclearized North Korea.

“I think President Trump would be very disappointed if Chairman Kim doesn’t return to the negotiating table or conducts missile tests that are inconsistent with the agreements that they made when the two of them were together these three times,” he said.